I'll confess - before I started this sports gig I was losing interest in The Cleveland Browns.  My typical Sunday?  I immediately go to the split screen function on my TV, put the Browns on in the dominant window with the audio up, and the best game of the afternoon up in the other (that's the beauty of DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket, a service that's saved my sanity more than once) and when the team eventually succumbed to mediocrity, I could switch.

But considering the past few weeks that have yielded victories against the New York Jets, the Atlanta Falcons and an extremely competitive outing against the San Diego Chargers, they've got my interest again.  No, I'm certainly not expecting some miraculous run to the playoffs, but the coming weeks should reveal whether Coach Romeo Crennel and General Manager Phil Savage's recipe for success will eventually yield some sort of football feast.

On offense there is a core there that includes Braylon Edwards, Kellen Winslow Jr. (who so far has backed up all the talk) and if Charlie Frye can develop and LaCharles Bentley come back from a career-threatening knee injury, there's promise there.

On defense, if they can stay healthy, the DBs are turning out to be a strength and the linebackers, which include Andra Davis, continue to become acclimated to Crenne's 3-4 defense.  As for last spring's top draft choice Kamerion Wimbley, he flashes some brilliance on occasion.

It's all going to be a matter of what Savage can add to it during the off season to finally give Browns fans some reason to be optimistic about returning to the playoffs.

Yes, I sat through that debacle last week known as the Bucks vs. The Illini.

That 17-10 victory by Troy Smith and the boys should have never played out that way.  The Illini is a team that the Bucks should have dominated from start to finish and I have to bet that Coach Jim Tressel knows that.

And it's not difficult to figure out what exactly happened - the Bucks were looking ahead to Nov. 18.  The same can be said as Michigan came close to falling asleep in the closing moments against Ball State University. But that's no excuse.  Everyone knows that should both teams remain undefeated, this version of OSU vs. Michigan will be the battle in the schools' long and storied histories.

Northwestern won't be a pushover by any stretch of the imagination.  Until last week, the Buckeyes played like the nation's No. 1 since being tested by Penn State.  Time to wake up and remember that.   Otherwise we members of the media won't have a lot to hype other than a great rivalry game next week. 

Last night again showed why I've grown to love college football.  Talk about drama.  Talk about excitement.  Talk about a team's unwillingness to quit.  At one point Rutgers was down by 18 points yet still managed to mount a comeback and pull this thing out.

Of course there was some help. You have to feel for the Louisville defensive end who was offsides on a botched field goal attempt giving Rutgers placekicker Jeremey Ito another shot at putting the Scarlet Knights ahead.  It effectively ended the Cardinals' shot at playing in the National Championship Game and put Rutgers into the picture for some inexplicable reason.

The Scarlet Knights were impressive, gritty, gutsy and fun to watch?  Playing in the championship game?  Last time I checked, they still played in the Big East.  The conference isn't exactly populated by world beaters.

One thing you never have to worry about with the Ohio State Buckeyes as long as Jim Tressel leads the football team - they will maximize their rep with prospective recruits.

In the coming weeks the best way to do that - OSU-Michigan weekend.  According to assorted sites, the Bucks will host seven recruits whom they have already tendered scholarship offers.  The most coveted - Kristofer O'Dowd, Salpointe Catholic High School, Tuscon, Ariz., a blue chip center prospect who is the top rated center in the country, according to Scouts.com.

Five four-star prospects - defensive tackle Joseph Barksdale, Detroit, Mich.; safety Major Wright out of Ft. Lauderdale Fla.; cornerback DeMarcus Van Dyke, Miami, Fla. (who could renege on a verbal to the Miami Hurricanes now that their program is in turmoil); wide receiver Leonard Hankerson, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. and defensive tackle Cameron Heyward, Suwanee, Ga. - are slated to take in OSU's sprawling campus along with three-star prospect linebacker Brian Rolle out of Immokalee, Fla.

Let's call it deliberate seduction.  Think of it.  If the Bucks and the Wolverines succeed in not looking past Northwestern and Indiana respectively this coming week and actually meet as the top two ranked teams in the country, Columbus will be college football nirvana Nov. 18.  There's no better way to show bright-eyed recruits the passion for football at Ohio State and how almost every year there's a reasonable shot at the team working its way into national title consideration.

Growing up male and in Ohio, you generally tend to have the football gene.  It's just the law of nature in the Buckeye State.

While I always held a particular fondness for the Buckeyes as a kid, the Cleveland Browns, pro football and Sundays were what I lived for in the fall.  A couple years at Ohio State University and consistent Browns mediocrity changed that.  I live for football Saturdays now.

What that has done, however, is made me more of a fan of college football.  While it's certainly a myth that college football is a character builder for its "student-athletes" and the NCAA and its members profit handsomely from lucrative television contracts during the regular and bowl seasons, it still is a purer form of the game. I like the fact that most of these athletes are playing for the love of the game still; although I know that love is pragmatic in that they expect to eventually play on Sundays.

I love it when a Buckeye player who scores a touchdown approaches it as if they were Browns' great Jim Brown - they hand the ball to the nearest official and act as if they've been in the end zone before and will be back again.

And what I really love about college football is nights like tonight. We have two undefeated teams in the Louisville Cardinals and Rutgers Scarlet Knights who are making noise within the Bowl Championship Series.  Both are undefeated.  Louisvilles sits at No. 3 on the precipice of making what five years ago would have been an improbable appearance in the National Championship Game.  Rutgers, also undefeated, sits at No. 15.

The Cardinals have an impressive QB in Brian Brohm, a definite NFL prospect who knows how to lead his team and possesses a canon for an arm.  If the Cardinals have any advantage, it's that Brohm and his boys have played in quasi big games before.  At Rutgers, this is being billed as the biggest game in the school's history, so the bright lights on the national stage that is ESPN may prove a bit much.

But a couple stats point to the fact that this could be a good one.  Brohm & Co. average 39 points per game and 492 yards per game on offense.  Rutgers has the second best defense in the country allowing an anemic nine points per contest.

I'm salivating already over the prospect of watching a very good game between players that care.

Normally I'm the last person in Northeast Ohio checking out 19 Action News on WOIO, but after watching promos for a Tom Meyer investigation piece regarding the Browns and them allegedly fleecing the City of Cleveland, my curiosity was piqued.  Not piqued enough to watch the story live; I recorded it on my DVR. After finally getting to it today, it is what it is.  The story basically says that the Browns broke some rules regarding competitive bidding over some carpeting and other repairs.  Yawn!  The total for all of this was a little over $1 million. For those so inclined, you can find the piece online here.

Meyer went into detail about things completely unrelated to the stadium repair issues such as the finances of last Septembers charity high school games, with an emphasis on the negative.

Does 19 Action News have such little regard for its viewers that it can't see what this is - payback?  Retribution for the Browns pulling the plug on its contract with the station to broadcast the football team's pre-season games?  Sure some of it has to do with the fact that it's sweeps month, but at best this report was a reach, at its worst it's a hit job.